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Last week's Picasa software update from Google brought with it a neat trick--facial recognition. But it wasn't the first free consumer photo-editing software to find faces. In January, Apple unveiled the latest version of iLife, which included an updated version of iPhoto that could detect and recognize faces in your photos. And this time last year, Microsoft released an updated version of its Windows Live Photo Gallery desktop software that could find faces inside of photos, though it couldn't (and still can't) recognize who's in them.
So, how do these three stack up? To figure that out, we put them to the test. Using 500 sample photos on fresh installs of each program, we tracked around how long each of the tools took to process all the photos, as well as some notable hits and misses from each.
To be fair, our results may not scale, or match the experience you will have. For one, we're using a test bed of photos that's almost entirely 12-megapixel JPEG files, whereas some people may be shooting smaller or larger files that may be in different formats and contain large groups of people--something that can slow these programs down. You're also likely to have a whole lot more than 500 photos sitting around on your computer; we certainly do.
Note: Adobe's PhotoShop Elements software (for Windows | Mac), which also includes a facial recognition feature was not included in this roundup since it's a paid application. Technically iPhoto is as well, but we included it since it comes free on all Macs.
The apps and workflows
iPhoto
iPhoto is the only product of the bunch that's Mac-only. It comes bundled with all new Macs, but the latest version (which includes face detection) must be purchased as a software upgrade if you've got iPhoto '08 or lower. We've included it in this roundup as a free product since it comes bundled with all new Macs.
Face scanning in iPhoto happens automatically, but it's largely a manual process, requiring users to "train" the system to recognize certain faces. The program took around nine minutes to scan through our 500 test photos and when it was done it didn't offer up any suggestions of photos with faces in them.
Instead, users are required to click on a photo with a face in it and hope the program picked it up. If it has, users can simply type the name in--which will auto complete if the person is in your Mac address book. If someone's face was not found, but you can see it in the photo, you can manually contain the face inside of a box, then tag it with their name.
iPhoto's system offers up suggestions of faces it thinks belong to certain people.
(Credit: CNET)After you add names to just few photos, iPhoto's system begins to piece together others that look the same--although it doesn't learn as fast as it does for photos where it already found the faces. In my testing, it only took two photos to get it to offer up some more suggestions. If those suggestions are correct, continuing to add them was just a matter of a few clicks.
iPhoto's system for doing this isn't perfect though.... Read more
Google's recent release of Picasa 3 (review) introduced a dozen changes to the already popular photo organizer.
A few are small, overdue bridges between the desktop app and Web Albums that greatly impact your work flow, and some are much more ambitious features that substantially extend Picasa's abilities. Almost all of them hit the mark (there is one exception.)
This First Look video takes you on a tour of some of the more salient features of this terrific desktop app for everyday storing, editing, and sharing.
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CNET Networks)
Though Photoshop rules the roost when it comes to image-editing software, not everyone needs many of the more advanced functions Photoshop has to offer. Many casual digital camera users probably don't want to spend the money on higher-end software, either.
That's where Pixelmator comes in. With Pixelmator ($59) you get most of the tools, color-correction features, effects, and layer management options you would find in a program like Photoshop, but without the steep price tag. The recently released version 1.3 adds several more useful features and fixes bugs from previous versions.
Familiar image-editing tools like the selector, magic wand, pencil, eraser, and paint bucket tools are all included. But you also get retouching tools for blurring hard edges and sharpening tools to improve blurry areas and enhance images to your liking. With the layer manager you can experiment with changes before making them permanent, complete with opacity sliders making it easy to compare between layers. If you really want to get down and dirty, you play with over 130 filters and effects, many of which give you similar results to Photoshop. When you're finished, you can save your work in several different formats making it possible to continue working in other programs or upload your work directly to the Web.
Familiar tools and pallets, color-correction and adjustment features, along with layer management tools make this app easily worth the price
(Credit: CNET Networks)Certainly Pixelmator will not make you want to throw out Photoshop. But if you're not a pro photographer and just need some better than average image-editing tools, this app offers all the right features at an affordable price.
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ACDSee)
This morning I offloaded nearly 1,000 images from my camera's SD card. As I watched the photos tick off one by one, I had a feeling I had already put most of them on my computer, but since I am hopelessly unorganized I'll now have to go through them all to make sure I don't have doubles taking up valuable storage space.
If you have similar issues and/or know someone else who does, too, you might be interested in this holiday deal from ACDSee. From now until December 1, the company is offering up its Photo Manager 2009 software for $59.99 and including a bonus gift copy to give to another hopelessly unorganized individual. The total price comes to $68.94 after shipping.
The list of features is exhaustive for average point-and-shoot photographers--from helping you print and back up photos to an import tool that organizes images as they come off a card or camera to letting you view a long list of file types. And despite the confusing picture on the right, the interface is straightforward.
If your pictures are piling up and you can't find anything and know someone else in the same shape, this might be a good way to go. Plus, it's free to try if you want to test it out before you buy it.
Photoshop CS3 for Mac is still your top choice if you're serious about image editing. Loaded with features for color-correction, photo enhancements, filters, effects, and layer management, Photoshop is the pro-level image-editing software to measure all others by. If you'd like a closer look at some of the features Photoshop CS3 has to offer, check out our First Look video to see if you're ready to download the trial.
With the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements, Adobe's laying on the Web subscription message really thick. Take, for instance, the Welcome screen, which is your first encounter with either one of the applications. The standard Organize, Edit, Create, and Share options get relegated to a task bar that's relatively inconspicuous compared with the large, rotating slide show heralding the many benefits of the free and $49.99 Plus memberships for Photoshop.com (more project templates, remote backup, and 20GB-plus of storage space). Adobe might as well have sold the space as an ad; it's that annoying. (For more on the online and mobile aspects of the Elements release, read our coverage on Download.com.) And that's too bad, because Photoshop Elements remains a very nice midrange photo editor, but all of these bells and whistles--some pretty off-key--increasingly detract from its core strengths.
Click here for a tour of Photoshop Elements 7's features
The program's main advantage is that it's cheaper than Photoshop and Lightroom, but remains powerful enough for most photo retouching tasks. Thus, the improved raw workflow is quite welcome--improved, in that you can bypass it entirely if you want. For example, to create a slide show of NEF (Nikon raw) files, it simply applies the default raw-processing settings and treats them like JPEGs.
Also quite useful is the new text search box in the organizer, which is a fast, easy way to filter by keywords or basic metadata. Very basic metadata; you can only search on time, data, camera, and caption text. But that should be sufficient for this class of user.
... Read moreBecause not everyone has a Nokia N95 or comparable luxurious 5-megapixel camera (including me,) most of us have to grudgingly accept our camera phones' variable output quality or take the time to fix photos of emotional value. (Or blackmail value, which is also extremely powerful.)
There are a ton of tips out there for improving mobile phone images, and most of them involve a proficiency in advanced image-editing tools and a working knowledge of the parameters required for a dizzying number of tools. That's surely a fun challenge for digital photography enthusiasts of all levels, but what about those with limited time on their hands who just want a quick, reliable fix?
Though subtle, the image on the right exhibits lighter corners and smoother, brighter tones. Compare the curtain noise, for instance.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Mobile media editors
Artifacts from JPEG compression are common problem spots. You've seen those choppy edges and gradients, and abundant digital noise. You've also no doubt noticed that contrast, sharpness, and color quality routinely suffer. There's always trying to eliminate them with an editing app built for mobile media, like Roxio Media Manager, which comes included in my BlackBerry desktop software. However, I found that neither the basic tools to manually or autocorrect photos adequately fixed exposure, saturation, and sharpness; nor did it reverse the glaring red-eye in individual or batch modes.
The freeware app Mobile Photo Enhancer performed much better. A sometimes laggy processor, the app nevertheless noticeably improved photo quality, especially the smoothness and brightness of skin tones. Its basic tools did allow for some sensitivity in reducing noise, sharpening the shot, adjusting levels, and optionally doubling the image resolution. While the overall photo quality improved, the app once again failed on red-eye removal.
Quick fixes with image editors
Before editing, the subjects resembled demonic zombies. Brightness, saturation, and a combination of automated and manual red-eye correction reinstated the glow of health.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Automated batch editing salvaged my photos enough to pass on to friends, but unsurprisingly, individual editing focused on problem areas of sharpness, contrast, and color saturation produces much better photos. Favorite free editors from CNET Download.com include IrfanView, FastStone, and Paint.NET.
The first step is getting levels and contrast in order. See if you like the looks of your program's auto-levels. If not, undo the change and start anew by tweaking brightness and contrast. I usually amp up each considerably. Next, I attack dullness by increasing the saturation, often by 5 to 10 units. This notably improves skin tones and banishes that drained, vampiric matting produced by dimly lit photos, but too much can make the subject looks candied.
Most of the portraits that file out of my BlackBerry are hard hit by red-eye, which only some image editors are skilled at fixing. The freebies, on average, are not. In those cases, zoom in on the eyes to hand-fix them with a pencil, brush, and color-picker tool. It admittedly adds a few minutes, but makes a big difference in the overall image by the time you zoom back out.
I follow up the whole procedure by lightly sharpening the image or the image edges if that's an option in the program I've opened. Oversharpening images can leave them grainy, especially if they're again saved as JPEGs.
Tips for intermediate-to-advanced users
The five-step process above is considerably more involved than a one-click batch conversion, but it will hardly satisfy photography enthusiasts or perfectionists. I'll leave you with an example of a more advanced technique that makes use of image layers and manual blurring, and invite you to share your own methods for improving camera phone photos in the comments below.
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CNET Networks)
I take a lot of pictures with my digital camera at birthdays, family gatherings, and other events, so I'm always on the lookout for new ways to share the photos. As new programs hit the scene and older programs evolve over time, my favorites change because of various factors like ease of use, number of features, and of course, the king of all reasons: price.
One of the best ways I've found to share pictures with friends and family is to make them as accessible as possible by creating Web albums. With the right software, you can lay out your pictures any way you want, create a template to fit the theme, and write in your own captions. When you're done, simply send a link to your personalized Web album.
There are plenty of paid offerings to choose from in this category of software, but I've found several free programs that do the job nicely. The best Web album software provides ways to host your work on the Web so all you'll need is some creativity and your already honed photo-snapping skills.
The step-by-step process makes it easy to create simple albums.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Photozig Albums Express offers a step-by-step process so you can design your project from start to finish. Big button icons with descriptions make it easy to start your project and select the preferred output for your images including sending in e-mail, burning to a CD, or uploading to a Web site. The finished product is a basic layout of thumbnails that you can click to enlarge, but you'll have no skins to choose from with this one. The Photozig Web site requires you register with an e-mail address, but you'll be able to display your albums on the Web for free once you're signed up. For basic albums, this is the one to choose.
A clean-looking interface and several themes make album creation easy.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Web Photo Album is another simple free album creator offering several nice (if sometimes cheesy) templates. A nice interface layout makes it easy to find the pictures you want and quickly create a simple album. It offers basic editing functions like red-eye removal and picture rotation, and you can add captions to each picture. The finished product comes out as a page of thumbnails and once you click on a picture, you're given a close up with the ability to navigate to other shots across the top of the page. Though there are a staggering number of themes to choose from to match your pictures, your overall layout is unchangeable. Web Photo Album lets you sign up for the free Photo hosting service, or you can save to a folder to burn to CD or post to your own site.
With numerous skin and layout choices, JAlbum is tough to beat.
(Credit: CNET Networks)JAlbum for both PC and Mac users is one of my long-time favorite free Web album programs. It doesn't direct you through the process like Photozig, but a quick look through the menus will be enough for you to get started creating great Web albums. There are several great-looking templates and skins to choose from, with more skins available at the JAlbum Web site. An integrated FTP program makes it easy to post albums to your Web site or blog. The JAlbum site also lets you post your projects to their Web hosting service for free, but as with the others, you'll need to register with a name and e-mail address.
With spring weather returning here in the Northern hemisphere, you're going to have a lot of chances to snap some great pictures. Use one of these free Web album programs to turn your pictures into a nice project that's easy to share with anyone.
Adobe's VP of Hosted and Consumer Services refers to Photoshop Express as "the on-ramp to the Adobe digital-imaging franchise." Next exit Photoshop Elements? Construction delays? Slippery pavement ahead? The mind reels with metaphorical possibilities. With its familiar-looking organizational tools, slick Flash-based interface and robust retouching algorithms, Express embodies Adobe at its potential finest--this is a newborn beta, after all, and we should expect bugs. (If it should reach senior betahood, like Gmail, we will cease to forgive.) But there are also a few potholes in this on-ramp to beware.
The good: Slick, attractive interface; useful retouching tools and well-done interface for using them; most operations relatively fast.
The bad: Doesn't support photos from 12-megapixel or higher cameras; some unnattractive Terms of Service; no filtering or keywording; no printing options.
The bottom line: Though there's a lot to like about Adobe's first stab at online photo editing and sharing, you probably want to wait until the company fixes a few problems with the beta--and de-fangs its terms of service--before uploading scads of photos to Adobe Photoshop Express.
Ratings:
Design and ease of use: 8
Features: 7
Performance: 7
Policies: 5
Overall: 6.8
Photoshop Express is two things: a photo-sharing site targeting the millions of snapshot photographers who think software such as Photoshop Elements is too difficult, too disconnected or just too much, and a platform from which Adobe will serve partner sites with editing tools. At beta launch, Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa comprise the short list of partners; Flickr will be next in line, though a date has not been announced.
As a sharing site it's simultaneously pretty and functional. And it succeeds as a proof-of-concept that Flash and Flex allow you to create robust online applications that look and feel like local ones. For sharing, the feature set is pretty typical: it lets you upload photos into albums (up to 2GB), organize them, make them public for sharing or share them privately via email links, and generate and email nice-looking self-contained Flash slideshows. There's lots of dragging and dropping to organize, and a free vanity URL.
For editing, it delivers a better-than-average experience. In addition to a more-than-sufficient set of tools for adjusting exposure, color and sharpness and touching up artifacts like red-eye and fixing blemishes, it also supplies a basic set of specifial effects that let you turn bad or boring pictures into something a bit more interesting. The application also displays a snapshot history of your edits, which is a nice touch missing even from Adobe's desktop products. Most of the tools operate relatively quickly; only Distort left me singing the not-so-realtime blues. (For a discussion of the interface, click through the slide show.)
... Read more
Along with "What's the best free video-editing software?" one of the most frequent questions I receive from CNET Download.com users is, "How can I put my photos on a DVD that anyone can watch?" For everyone whom I wasn't able to respond to personally, here's a quick overview.
First off, the most important issue is the DVD player for which you're creating the slide show. Many DVD players nowadays don't need a specially formatted disc to view digital pictures, and some have built-in slide-show features for viewing JPEG images. The best way to find out is to actually try it. Burn a DVD full of digital images (I personally use CDBurnerXP), fire up your DVD player with your new disc, and see what happens.
If your player can read JPEG and AVI files from a regular data DVD, you're on Easy Street. There are numerous free digital-photo-management apps that will create AVI files of your images for burning to DVD. Google's Picasa is an excellent choice. Windows Movie Maker (included free in XP and Vista) is another solid free solution for creating AVI slideshows.
The rub, of course, is that not all DVD players can read AVI or JPEG files. In order to view your slide show on these less-helpful DVD players, you'll need to convert your AVI slide show to a VOB file, and, for maximum compatibility, you'll probably want DVD information files (IFO) and their sometimes necessary backups (BUP).
It's difficult to find VOB encoding in a free DVD slide-show burner. In fact, I don't know of one. If you do, please tell me about it. Luckily, there are several afforable commercial apps that can perform the nitty-gritty work of burning DVD slide shows.
The most famous and most powerful software is likely Nero, which includes a massive amount of slide-show-authoring options for photo DVDs. If you don't need all of the audio and video functionality included in the full suite, Nero PhotoShow Deluxe offers a cheaper alternative for creating DVD slide shows.
Another popular option is VSO Software's simply named PhotoDVD app. The interface and features are sparser than Nero; it's simply a bare-bones program that gets the job done. Nero has a 15-day trial for PhotoShow Deluxe, while the free PhotoDVD trial lets you create slide shows with up to 100 images.
What do you all use to create slide shows for watching on your TV via DVD? Can your players handle JPEG and AVI files, or have you been forced into the wild world of video conversion? Tell me about it in the comments.
